1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for controlling home electronic devices connected to a home network, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for controlling home electronic devices connected to a home network through voice command processing.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a home network environment, comprehensive information home electronic devices, in which digital broadcasting receivers, networked home electrical appliances, information communication devices, digital broadcasting programs, digital Internet contents, and high speed wired and wireless communication services are combined, have been introduced such that a variety of convenient functions are available to users. However, the manipulation and control have become more complicated. The user should sequentially direct a series of steps so that a home electronic device can provide predetermined services. For this, the user should understand interoperations between home electronic devices. For example, in order to reproduce a file stored in a personal computer (PC) on a TV, the user should inconveniently order or select 7 steps sequentially: select download menu of a digital TV→select download from a PC→connect the PC→search for video programs that can be downloaded from the PC→select a desired video program→download the file from the PC to the digital TV→reproduce the file in the digital TV.
Voice is the most effective and natural means for communications in daily life, and voice command processing has been developed as an advanced form of man-machine interface following the development of voice recognition technology.
Technologies for controlling a single device through voice command processing have been disclosed in a number of patents. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,340,797, 4,340,798, 4,340,799, and 4,513,189 all relate to technology for controlling an oven by human voice, and disclose technologies by which selection of functions and power of an oven is performed in the form of a dialogue by voice. Also, U.S. Pat. No. 4,520,576 relates to a technology for controlling a washing machine through voice, and discloses the technology for controlling the washing processes through voice recognition and synthesis. Besides, there are many prior art technologies having different application objects, including a voice responsive dialing technology disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,222,121, a voice responsive camera technology disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,389,109, and a voice Internet command processing technology disclosed in Korean Patent Publication No. 2000-49417.
These technologies all relate to performing a single function of an independent home electronic device, and a voice command simply replaces the function of a button of a home electronic device. These technologies can be implemented by simple mapping between voice patterns and a function. European Patent No. 1,063,637 defines a module for changing a voice database, or a command definition module in accordance with installing a new device, but this also relates to a single home electronic device control system by comparison of voice that is stored in advance, with input voice.
Technologies for controlling home electronic devices connected to a home network through voice command processing have been disclosed in a number of patents. U.S. Pat. No. 6,243,707 and Korea Patent No. 2001-14155 relate to methods for controlling home electronic devices in a home network based on a browser, in which technologies for defining macro functions in order to reduce a series of command steps repeated by a user are disclosed. That is, using browser-based interfaces, a series of command steps desired by the user are sequentially stored as macros and execution of these macros replaces a series of command steps.
Though the command processing technologies using macro definitions provide user convenience by reducing the complexity of complicated control when compared to other prior art technologies, the user should still create every macro for the command processing technologies using macro definitions, and the user should generate the entire macros to modify a part of macros.
Besides, European Patent No. 1,085,500 relates to a module preprocessing a voice command for controlling a home electronic device, and discloses a voice command recognition method which recognizes a predetermined voice signal, a continuous command recognition method by time intervals, and a technology for controlling sounds of ambient home electronic devices after recognizing a voice command.
Also, Korea Patent No. 2000-45069 relates to a remote control technology and discloses a voice recognition home automation method and a method for controlling from the outside of a house home electronic devices using the voice recognition home automation method, by which devices that can be controlled by a remote controller among ordinary home devices and are connected to power are controlled from the outside of the house by a voice signal through a telephone set.
However, among the disclosed prior art technologies there is no technology by which home electronic devices are controlled by a simple voice command of a user after complicated multi-step user commands are reduced in order to control the home electronic devices connected to a home network.